I'm sponsoring this open case for Roland Mainz it is number 4 in a
series of 4 addressing the default shell environment.
Template Version: @(#)sac_nextcase %I% %G% SMI
1. Introduction
1.1. Project/Component Working Name:
Default shell environment: TMPDIR
1.2. Name of Document Author/Supplier:
Author: Roland Mainz
1.3 Date of This Document:
25 April, 2007
4. Technical Description
Default shell environment enhancements: TMPDIR
Description and Justification:
This case proposes to introduce a set of enhancements for the default
shell environment in Solaris to provide a more user-friendly environment
for new users which are not yet familar with all the details in Unix and
to provide some help for adminstrators via introducing better system-wide
defaults and more configuration options.
The proposed changes are:
- A modification to "/etc/profile" (and the matching csh file) to set TMPDIR
to "/tmp/${LOGNAME}" if TMPDIR was not set yet. If the directory
specified
by "/tmp/${LOGNAME}" does not exist "/etc/profile"&co. will be
responsible
for creating this directory with the same permissions as the current
"/tmp".
If the directory already exists "/etc/profile"&co. is responsible to
check
whether the directory is owned by the current user (e.g.
$ /usr/bin/test -O dir #) and writeable (e.g. /usr/bin/test -w dir #),
if these conditions are not met TMPDIR will not be set.
The purpose of this change is to provide a "cleaner" layout of the /tmp
filesystem on large multiuser systems - instead of storing zillions of
files of various users into one directory it may be better to provide
something like a "home directory for temporary files", e.g. create one
subdir per user to store the temporary files there. This would allow
users and adminstrators to find their own temporary files more easily
and would avoid that something like $ ls -l /tmp # returns a few
thousand
files of thousands of users.
A disadvantage is that "/tmp" will fill-up with per-user directories over
time, however this is still better than having all files in one flat
directory which makes even simple searches for some files difficult if
the "/tmp"-directory contains too many files (a future sub-project of the
OpenSolaris.org "shell" project will look at this problem again and may
provide at least a simple way to cleanup empry directories).
Notes:
- The TMPDIR is set in "/etc/profile" for the whole machine but users are
always allowed to override these settings in their local environment
files (e.g. ~/.profile, ~/.kshrc, ~/.bashrc) on demand.
Interfaces:
Interface Stability Description
========= ========= ===========
env-var "TMPDIR" Committed Environment variable to define a
directory where temporary files
should be stored.
6. Resources and Schedule
6.4. Steering Committee requested information
6.4.1. Consolidation C-team Name:
ON
6.5. ARC review type: FastTrack
--
Darren J Moffat
